


To the West

by NightsMistress



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Case Fic, exploration of roles, post-Abhorsen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 01:46:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4416350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick leaving Ancelstierre to come to live in the Old Kingdom was not, as Lirael had thought, as simple as slipping over the Wall with an escort and the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. There are Dead creatures to send into Death, misplaced nephews to find, and a relationship to sort out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the West

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merit/gifts).



Nick leaving Ancelstierre to come to live in the Old Kingdom was not, as Lirael had thought, as simple as slipping over the Wall with an escort and the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. When he had announced his plans to the Perimeter Scouts, there had been a great deal of consternation, for reasons Lirael did not quite understand. It seemed to resolve, unhappily, with Nick promising to write to his uncle and explain that he had not been kidnapped by the Old Kingdom, and the Scouts accepting that this was the best they could hope for. Lirael was not sure that this would necessarily work, but perhaps things were different when you grew up with family. She wouldn’t know.

What she did know was that at the first possible convenience she had to find clothing for Nick that would not fall apart. Lirael knew that things sent from Ancelstierre often did not last. Reading Nick’s letters, for example, involved a lot more puzzle assembly skills than she suspected Nick knew, usually involving white gloves and tweezers. Lirael had some experience in repairing books as a Librarian which meant that she knew how to look after and preserve fragile sheets of paper, which helped. She knew that clothing was also prone to the same kind of disintegration; she remembered Nick’s clothes at Edge, and she assumed that they had been in better condition than the clothes he was wearing now. What was once some kind of formal wear and house slippers was now bloody, dirty and torn, and would only become more so the longer they travelled.

She thought about what she could trade for clothes for Nick as they flew from the Perimeter to the Guard post at Barhedrin in a flock of Paperwings, all daubed with the Royal Guard’s colours. It was not promising. She had enough money to pay for her supplies, but not enough to cover a full set of clothes and a plain sword that most people would need to travel through the Old Kingdom. She had little enough to trade as well, but in a posting like this there was bound to be some Charter Mark work that needed repair or recasting. She was becoming very skilled at spelling blades to kill the Dead, so she could offer her services for that she supposed.

The Guard post was a squat building, girdled by a tall wall easily one and a half times Lirael’s height, with a field for training that also doubled as a field for Paperwings to land. On their arrival they were greeted by a guard with a wild thatch of red hair, a squashed nose and a cheerful grin who introduced himself as Merron.

“Been a rough morning, has it?” said Merron, looking over the two of them with undisguised interest..

Lirael flushed. She knew what they looked like. She, at least looked like the Abhorsen-in-Waiting: a blue surcoat with stars quartered with keys, a bandoleer of seven bells across her chest, spelled sword by her side, and dark haired and pale-skinned like the Abhorsen. Nick, on the other hand, was still dressed as if he was attending a social party gone terribly wrong, blood and mud smeared across his face and into his blond hair,

“You can’t go on like you are,” continued Merron. “How about you come along with me and I’ll give you some of my old gear?”

“Are you sure?” asked Lirael. “I didn’t bring enough money with me to pay you for it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Merron said. “You and the Abhorsen, you do more than enough. It’d be an honour.”

“Well then, I’d love to,” said Nick. He looked down at the bloody torn rags on his feet that might once have been indoor slippers, and added wryly, “I’m afraid that my slippers have seen better days.”

“Come along then!” said Merron. He called over his shoulder, “Abhorsen-in-Waiting, your Paperwing should be ready to go!”

“Thank you,” said Lirael. In the field there was only one there at the moment that could be hers, a red-and-gold painted Paperwing, one of the royal ones and she walked over to inspect its paper layer. She felt intensely guilty at borrowing it over the last week, even if it had been pressed upon her by Sabriel, with a quiet comment that the Abhorsen must cover a lot of ground and a Paperwing was the fastest way to get there. Since leaving Sam out in the west, where his Southerlings were settling, Lirael had travelled to Estwald, as there was a Free Magic creature threatening the town. There always were Free Magic creatures and Dead close to Estwald, more so than other towns. Lirael did not know why, but the Paperwing was a blessing when she had to travel there, and then down to the Perimeter.

After confirming that there were no rips or tears that might need mending, Lirael looked inside the craft for its supplies. There were supplies for a couple of days, blankets… Lirael was pleased to see two firestarters in the Paperwing, after spending two miserable days without a working firestarter and unable to use the Charter without summoning a Free Magic creature before she was prepared for it.

“Oh, I say!” she heard Nick say. “Is that a plane?”

She turned to look at him. Nick was now dressed in the light armour of the Guard, a green-brown surcoat over it, and sensible leather boots. A short sword rested at his hip, though his movements were uneasy and acutely aware of the sword’s existence. If it weren’t for that, he might almost pass as a native of the Old Kingdom, his Charter Mark adding to the impression rather than making him stand out. He was gazing upon the Paperwing with open fascination.

“No, it’s a Paperwing,” she said.

“How does it work?” asked Nick. “I can’t see any engine or propeller, so I suppose it must be magic. Is the magic in the paper or the frame? Or do you make it magical when you use it?”

“I don’t know,” confessed Lirael, suspecting that this was how Nick and Sam came to be friends. They both had that same glint to their eye when confronted with a technical challenge. “But I can ask. Sam might know.”

Nick looked around as if expecting Sam to appear right then and there. “Is he around?”

“No,” said Lirael, shaking her head. “But I was going to fly to see him.” She wasn’t sure what possessed her to offer, “You’re welcome to come if you like.”

Nick smiled, which transformed his face from pleasantly attractive to handsome. “I’d love to,” he said, without even taking the time to think about it.

Lirael suspected that she had made a terrible mistake in inviting Nick along with her, but she could hardly take it back now. She knew that Sam would want to see Nick anyway, and it wouldn’t do to allow Nick to wander around the Old Kingdom unaccompanied. It was really the only decision that Lirael could have made under the circumstances, and she knew it. It was just coincidence that it ended up being that she was escorting Nick. If Sam were here he would have done it.

She continued to think about this as she showed Nick how to board the Paperwing and strap himself in. Did she like him? She thought she might. That made things worse, because what was she meant to do with that like?

She whistled the Charter Marks to call up the wind, and the Paperwing soared.

* * *

 A few hours into their journey, and Lirael was still uncomfortable. Flying a Paperwing with Nick as a passenger had proven to be very disconcerting. In her travels with Sam she had quickly overcome her natural tendency to avoid social interaction, because Sam was family. It was difficult to be nervous and tongue-tied around a particularly nervous nephew who looked to you for direction, and so Lirael forgot that he was also a handsome young man about her age. Nick … was something else entirely.

She knew, intellectually, about romance and dalliance; the Daughters of the Clayr were hardly celibate and it was not uncommon for one of the Clayr to take a lover either from one of the traders that came to visit their lonely glacier, or a fellow Clayr. Perhaps if she had had the Sight herself — and it only hurt a little now to think that she never would, like an old long healed scar — she too might have taken one, and known what to do with Nick.

Instead, as she caught her breath from whistling up the winds to take them to Sam’s Southerlings’ villages, she was acutely aware of the proximity of Nick as he sat behind her, of his knees and elbows, ankles and wrists, as he tried to look all around him at the landscape below without tipping out of the Paperwing.

“Is that the Ratterlin?” said Nick, interrupting Lirael’s increasingly self-conscious thoughts. “I think it must be, though I’ve only ever really seen it on maps.”

Lirael turned carefully in her seat to follow the line of Nick’s arm, angling her head to gaze over the side. The Ratterlin sprawled across the tableau of the landscape, a great flowing river that spilled heedlessly into distributaries that Lirael knew kept settlements safe from the Dead. The Restoration of King Touchstone had somewhat stemmed the once unchecked tide of necromancers and Free Magic creatures, but the further one travelled from Belisaere and Charter Stones, the more villages kept to what they knew: stay close to running water, watch out for your neighbours and never forget the Charter Marks to summon fire. Strangers were rarely welcome, especially ones that bore the seven bells of a necromancer, though Lirael’s uncorrupted Charter Mark warded off most hostilities. Even in the most remote of locations, most people knew what the Abhorsen and the Abhorsen-in-Waiting were in the Old Kingdom.

“It is,” agreed Lirael. “I suppose you didn’t get to see a lot of it before.”

“I’ve got plenty of time to make up for that!” said Nick cheerfully. “I’ve decided that as being a scientist is not an option here, I shall become an explorer and map all of the rivers.”

“Oh,” said Lirael, uncertain if Nick was being serious or not. She thought that she was being foolish, but she had hoped that Nick would come to Belisaere, at least for a time. Foolish, because she was rarely there herself now that she had two functional hands once more, and Nick was, if she was being honest with herself, a friend of Sam’s. He barely knew her at all. It was hardly reasonable for her to hope that he might want to stay somewhere for her sake. “If you really want to.”

Nick fell silent, whether it was because he was aware that he had said something to distress Lirael or he was distracted by the view, Lirael was not sure. Silence used to be comforting to her, in a time and place where she could write notes and not have to speak a word for days. This silence stretched out uncomfortably. It was a silence that begged for words to fill it, but she did not know what those words should be.

Nick cleared his throat nervously, as if in preparation to speak. Lirael waited, hoping and fearing that he knew the words that she was struggling to find.

“Do you know where Sam is now?” asked Nick. Lirael felt peculiarly relieved. “Perhaps he’s a more frequent correspondent with you; I’m hard pressed getting letters out of him once every three months!”

Lirael huffed a laugh at this. Sam’s notoriously awful skills as a regular correspondent were well known amongst his family in Belisaere. Sabriel had told her about how when he went to school, he would write only at the end of the school semester, in direct contrast to Ellimere’s regular monthly letters. Sam had been embarrassed by this, especially when the rest of the family joined in, but not enough it seemed to curb the habit.

“I know where I dropped him off a week ago,” said Lirael. “I can’t say whether he’s still there.”

“What was he doing?” asked Nick. “The last I heard, he was building you a hand.”

Lirael glanced down at her hand. It was a marvellous piece of work, almost like having her own hand back. Almost. The sensations were not quite right: she could feel heat and cold, the weight of a bell or sword in her hand, but it did not match her own memories of what it felt like to have that hand. She supposed that it was different and that she would get used to it given time.

“It was the Southerlings,” said Lirael. “Sam had made a promise on his blood to help them, and so once he had finished with my hand he had to go right away to help.”

“I see, he had to keep his word,” said Nick, clearly not seeing at all.

Lirael did not know how to explain the importance of promises and oaths to Nick, especially when sworn by a Royal Prince on his own blood. Each of the five bloodlines had their own unique gifts, and the royal blood was loyalty between royal and subject. Sam could as much break his own promise as he could undo the events of the past; it was something antithetical to his very bloodline. Instead, she said “Yes, I suppose so.”

Nick hummed tunelessly for a minute. “Do you think it’s something we can help with?” he said at last.

“I don’t know,” said Lirael. “I hope so. Though I don’t know anything about building villages or making farmland.”

“Nor do I,” said Nick. “But I’m sure someone down there does. We’ll just have to find them.”

“I suppose we will,” said Lirael, turning her attention to navigation. It was easier and less troublesome than navigating her relationship with Nick, if she could call it that at all.

* * *

 Nick had fallen asleep not long after they had sighted the Ratterlin, worn out by blood loss, his desperate race to the Wall and the healing afterward. This time around the silence was comforting, and allowed Lirael to consider what they might encounter.

There had been terribly little news travelling from the Southerling settlements since they were founded. It was not the silence that comes with villages being overrun by Dead Hands or worse, as traders came and sold their wares and reported back when they returned to Belisaere. By all accounts, they were polite but held themselves apart from others, neither refusing trade nor assimilating into the ways of the Old Kingdom. No child was baptised with a Charter Mark at birth, despite the benefits that it would give them, and she had heard that they refused to allow Charter Stones in their villages. Sam had been very frustrated at the last part, as his oath to them meant that he was solely responsible for their welfare, and everyone knew that having a functional Charter Stone in a village was one of the best ways to ward off the Dead.

Still, Lirael thought that it was not so terribly unusual that they would want to cling to what little of their homeland they could. She still had her woven ring from her Librarian waistcoat tucked away in a a pocket close to her heart. She still considered herself a Daughter of the Clayr as well as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, even if the Sight would only show her what had happened rather than what would happen. She could not fault them for being afraid and wanting to remember their home. She just wished that there was a way to translate the Charter to that.

She glanced over the side of the Paperwing and called up a Charter Mark for an easterly wind, letting it drop from her lips in a whistling trill, to nudge their craft back along its course. She knew that there would be a field not far from here, large enough to land a Paperwing and close to a stream. It was where she had landed to drop Sam off, and she hoped that he had not travelled too far from there. Alone, she would not have worried, but Nick was still weak.

Behind her, she could hear Nick’s snores become arrhythmic as he stirred awake. “There’s a field, where I landed before,” said Lirael. “We’ll be there soon.”

“Be where?” said Nick groggily. She could hear him yawn, the sound of fabric bandages rubbing against flesh, the subtle shifting of someone who knew that he should not move but could not help it.

“Where I dropped Sam off last week,” said Lirael patiently. She was amused to learn that Nick was not a morning person, and it took him a while to wake even when not under the influence of the Ninth Bright Shiner.

“That’s sensible,” said Nick. “We won’t find a better place to start.”

Lirael nodded and pursed her lips to whistle up the winds. The sensation of whistling Charter Marks and the Paperwing responding was something she was becoming used to. A Paperwing, as it turned out, was a very useful thing for an Abhorsen — or an Abhorsen-in-Waiting — to have.

Once on the ground, Lirael turned to look at Nick. He looked far better than he had when she had found him, pale and slackly unconscious, blood pooling from his wrists onto the ground. There were faint pain lines in the corners of his mouth, and when he noticed her regard, he smiled at her.

“It’s nothing,” said Nick. “I’m just a little tired.”

“Please, let me help,” said Lirael. “There are Free Magic creatures that are attracted to blood.”

Nick went pale. “Oh, I see. Yes, please.” He then held up both wrists, facing palms up, for Lirael’s attention. She unwrapped the bandage on his left wrist, careful of the way he pressed his lips together.

Unwrapped, his left wrist was marred by a deep, jagged cut, though fortunately one that bled only a little now, the clotted blood stark against Nick’s bloodless skin. Supporting his wrist with her own left hand, Lirael drew the Charter Marks for healing with her right. They fell into Nick’s wrist and he shivered. The clot improved into a scab, becoming thick and tough, rather than the fragile, easily broken thing it was before. Lirael was disappointed at this, even knowing that Nick had idiosyncratic responses to Charter Magic, because the marks she had drawn had worked quite well to heal Sam’s infected wound when they had first met. Instead of vocalising her disappointment, she rewrapped Nick’s left wrist, careful not to jostle it unduly.

The right wrist was marked less deeply but the cut was more jagged, given that it had been done by his non-dominant hand. Lirael repeated the process, careful to wrap the wound carefully as he might have need of that hand in the next few hours. She let his wrist go, and stepped backward quickly, letting her hands fall to her side. Nick didn’t spare a glance to his wrists, instead gazing at her.

“You’re a wonder,” breathed Nick.

Lirael didn’t understand what he meant by that, or how she was to interpret the way he looked at her. She ducked her head, letting her hair fall over her hot face. “I’m glad I could help,” she said to her feet. In lieu of speaking to Nick, Lirael pulled out from her pack a device that Sam had made at the behest of his mother. It was a small flat piece of silvery metal, the edges smoothed away. Pinned on the top was a needle, free to spin as it willed. Sam had said that it was like a compass, something used in Ancelstierre to navigate by magnetic fields. Lirael was unfamiliar with the concept, but Sam had gone on to say that this device could find their family by pointing in the direction they were in.

Even after studying it, Lirael was not sure how it worked. She could see the Charter Marks on the surface of the metal, rising to attention and then slipping away as she watched, some she recognised but most she did not.

“What’s that?” said Nick, nodding at the divining tool. “I thought technology didn’t work over the Wall.”

“It’s something Sam made,” said Lirael. “It’s like a dowsing rod, but for people.”

“How does it work? Do you know?”

Lirael shook her head. “No. You’d have to ask Sam.” She saw Nick’s puzzled frown. “What is it?”

He kept his hands down as he studied it, frowning in concentration. “I thought I saw something on the metal,” said Nick slowly. “But I suppose it must have been my imagination. Maybe if I hold it…?”

He didn’t reach out for the device, to Lirael’s relief. Charter Magic seemed to act strangely around Nick, either not working at all, or working less effectively than it should. She had seen it herself, having to repeatedly cast Charter Marks that would have easily healed more life-threatening wounds in other people. Coupled with the reports that she had heard from the Wall, Nick represented a mystery. She hoped to have time to tease it out, if he would let her. If he would stay.

Instead, she blew on the device, fixing Sam in her mind. The needle spun rapidly on its axis like a top, before finally coming to rest straight ahead, parallel with the stream. She moved the device from side to side, and the needle moved with it, consistently pointing to parallel to the stream.

“It works,” said Lirael. “Sam must be this way.”

“But how far?” wondered Nick.

Lirael sighed. “I suppose we’ll know when we get there. It can’t be too far though; there’s a village nearby. An hour’s walk, maybe.”

“At least I have better shoes now,” said Nick wryly.

Lirael appreciated the joke with a wry smile of her own. “How are your feet? They looked pretty bad before.”

“Better thanks to you and your magic!” said Nick. “I’d really like to study it one day to learn how it works.”

“Um … I can …I can try and teach you,” said Lirael. “I’ve never taught anyone before though.”

“I’d like that,” said Nick. It was his turn to blush. “But um … first let’s find Sam.”

“Yes,” agreed Lirael, relieved at the change of topic. She set off in the direction the divining device pointed, Nick half a pace behind, into the forest that ran alongside the stream. Not far from where they landed was a path, well-kept and clear of plants, which made Lirael sigh in relief. If there was a well maintained path along the river, there would be a village nearby, which meant that Nick was more likely to not wear himself out.

“This way,” she said.

* * *

 The path had remained well-kept for the hour they walked along it, the sun-dappled stream a comforting presence. The air was free of the unmistakeable taint of Free Magic and for the first time in some time, Lirael was able to enjoy the walk for what it was. So often in the past she had been running for her life, or running for someone else’s life. There was nothing nipping at her heels other than anticipation to see Sam and find out what he had been doing the last week. Even Nick was breathing easily as they walked, far from the pained wheeze that he had had when last she saw him. He looked significantly better than the last time she saw him…

She let that thought drop out of sheer embarrassment. Instead, she squinted to see where the path went, because it looked like it diverged from the stream. As they drew closer, her suspicions were confirmed: the path did cut away from the forest. It showed signs of recent passage: bent grass, broken twigs, the occasional imprint in the dirt that could be a boot.

They followed the path around, cutting back through the forest.

“I say,” said Nick after ten minutes. “What is that?”

A tall stone jutted from the ground, its planes smooth and regular. It was not a Charter Stone, not yet, but it would be if Lirael understood what was happening. It glowed with the familiar, comforting light of the Charter, illuminated from the inside and outshining the afternoon sun. Lirael could feel the stone shift and change even from where she was standing, a peculiar sensation of something being made right and true for the first time in a long time. Nick moved to approach the stone, and Lirael stopped him with one hand.

Standing near the Charter Stone was a young man, also glowing. Curly haired from his father, black browed from his mother, and tall from both, the Charter Mage was none other than Prince Sameth, the first Wallmaker in over a thousand years. He stood there, both he and the Stone incandescent as if they were made of sunlight, for a moment. Then the glow faded and he was just an ordinary young man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and light mail, albeit mail covered by a surcoat with a coat of arms not seen before: the towers of the Royal blood and the trowel of the Wallmakers. He leaned against the Charter Stone with both hands, letting his head hang forward for a moment. Then, with a visible intake of breath, he straightened up.

“Are you all right?” said Lirael carefully.

Sam looked over at the two of them and a tired grin creased his face. “Aunt Lirael! You got my message! And what is Nick doing here? I thought he was at university?”

“I’m not sitting at Sunbere this term,” said Nick.

“What message?” said Lirael at the same time.

Sam groaned. “I worried that those messages weren’t going through.”

“That’s why you should have taken care of it yourself,” came a sarcastic voice from down around their feet. “Instead of leaving it for others to clean up after you.”

Lirael looked down for the speaker, recognising the voice. A small white cat wearing a collar with no bell on it climbed out of Sam’s pack, left at the base of the Charter Stone. The cat’s green eyes were wickedly amused and far too knowing to be an ordinary cat, because it was not an ordinary cat at all but instead a Free Magic creature that until recently had been bound in servitude to the Abhorsens.

“I thought you went up to the north,” said Lirael warily. The last she had heard, Mogget — or Yrael, she supposed, though it seemed odd to call a cat that — had gone up to the great forests in the north, far beyond the Clayr’s glacier. She had heard stories of those forests as a child, of how great and terrible Free Magic creatures roamed there, unchecked by the Abhorsen or the Charter. Her studies in the Library had only confirmed the truths of those stories.

“I did,” said Mogget diffidently. “Then I returned.”

“I think he just wanted someone to catch his fish for him,” added Sam. Colour had returned to his face and he stood up straighter, though he still looked very worn out. “He showed up two days ago, after I killed the monster for the second time.”

“And a great mess you made of it too,” said Mogget.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” said Nick judiciously. “When did this monster show up?”

“I don’t really know,” said Sam. “I found it the first night I got here. Or, I guess, it found me.” He wriggled his fingers as if to alleviate an ache from an old injury. “I thought I’d killed it, but it disappeared before I could burn it. I thought that something had taken it.” He sighed uncomfortably. “Sometimes people around here — not the Southerlings — take Free Magic creatures and cut them up. They put them on the doors to ward off the Dead.”

“That’s disgusting,” Lirael said. Her stomach turned at the thought. She couldn’t recall any Free Magic creatures that were drawn to dismembered parts, but she knew that that did not mean that one did not exist. “Have you tried to stop them?”

“When I can,” said Sam. His shoulders slumped in resignation. “They don’t always listen to me though.”

“You’re a Prince, Sam,” said Lirael. She nodded at his surcoat, and the emblem emblazoned on it. The fact that it was the towers quartered with the trowel should mean something, much like how the stars and keys meant that Lirael was a Remembrancer. What the towers meant for Sam, she didn’t know, but she thought Sam should by now. “You must be able to do it.”

“Maybe,” said Sam dubiously.

“You can do it,” said Nick confidently. “So what happened next?”

“That was when Mogget showed up,” said Sam, nodding at the cat sitting on his backpack as if he was nothing more than an ordinary cat admiring the view. “Or, rather, I killed it a second time and Mogget showed up while I was burning the body.”

“I told him that burning the body wouldn’t do any good on its own,” said Mogget.

“After I burned it,” added Sam sourly. “When it was of no use at all.”

“Does that mean you know what it is?” said Lirael.

“Yes,” said Mogget. He cleaned his claws with a delicate pink tongue and said nothing more.

“Then, what is it?” asked Nick.

“It’s a Pzich,” said Mogget. “Hardly worth all of this fuss."

“I have read about them,” said Lirael, puzzled. They were very ordinary Dead creatures, ones that the Book of the Dead barely spent a few paragraphs on before moving on to more interesting things. They were creatures whose song snared a listener’s free will before consuming it slowly over a couple of days. It was not a common Free Magic creature, however, as their only weapon was their song and that did not work on other Free Magic creatures. Their fiercely territorial natures meant that they could tolerate no interloper and so they were the natural prey of almost every Free Magic creature. The only thing that made them more difficult than Dead Hands to send past the Eighth Gate was the need to ring both Kibeth and Dyrim simultaneously.

It was this thought that brought Lirael up short. While Sam could go into Death and sing or whistle one of the bells’ pitch, he couldn’t sing both. The only way that both bells’ pitch could be sounded simultaneously would be if he had a set of necromancer’s bells himself. Lirael knew that Sam was still terribly afraid of Death, and that his death sense troubled him more than he would want to admit. Moreover, she knew that Mogget knew that as well, and wondered why he had suggested it to Sam in the first place. It could just be that Mogget was aware that the mere suggestion would make Sam uncomfortable, but he was no longer obligated to be a servant of the Abhorsens … and Sam wasn’t even an Abhorsen at that. Not in the sense that she knew it. Perhaps the definition of what an Abhorsen was had been different once, before the Interregnum.

“If you scowl like that you’ll get wrinkles,” said Mogget. “Prince Sameth has been tinkering again.”

“I’m sorry, what?” asked Lirael. She looked at Sam who looked peculiarly resigned. “Have you been in Death?”

“No, but I thought it would be that,” sighed Sam. “With Mogget telling me that I could sort it out if I wanted.”

“Sam, what is he talking about?” asked Nick.

“Oh … um … I heard stories when I first got here about monsters who would sing as they stole people’s souls, so I made ear plugs,” said Sam. He shrugged. “It seemed to work.”

“Did it?” asked Lirael in great surprise. The Book of the Dead had said that a Pzich’s song worked on anyone, whether they could ordinarily hear or not, as it bypassed the ears and affected their mind directly. The Book of the Dead was very explicit about how the only known protection against a Pzich’s song was to ring the bells before it had the opportunity to sing. It wasn’t a problem for an Abhorsen, used to ringing their bells quickly, but this was something else. Perhaps it was a good thing Sam had never finished reading the Book.

“Did you want them?” asked Sam. “Or I can make a set for you

“No,” said Lirael. “You keep yours. Oh, but — what about Nick?”

“Don’t bother,” said Mogget. “It won’t affect him.”

“It won’t?” asked Nick.

“Why not?” asked Sam at the same time.

“I’d feel better if Sam made Nick a set as well,” said Lirael firmly. It might be true that Nick may not be affected by the Pzich’s song. However, she didn’t care to chance it on Mogget’s word alone. Sabriel had told her the stories about Mogget and what he had done to other Abhorsens. She didn’t want to trust Nick’s safety on Mogget; he might find it perversely amusing for Nick to be affected.

“I’ll start now,” said Sam. He looked up at the sky and made a face. “It takes a while to do, so it’ll be done just around dusk.”

“All right,” said Lirael. “We have time for that.”

* * *

 Waiting, Lirael had learned, was the hardest part of being the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. She checked her bells, carefully holding them so that they did not ring, to make sure that there were no chips or flaws that might cause them to not ring true. There weren’t any, as there had not been any the other times that she had checked. She had checked the Charter Marks on her sword that would rend and destroy Dead flesh, and those too were strong and flawless. Everything was ready, and all they were doing now was waiting for Sam.

Sam was sitting by the fire that Nick had started near the Charter Stone, his gaze intent on the tools he had pulled from his backpack. Nick had headed down to the stream a short while ago, to fetch water before night fell, accompanied by a fish-seeking Mogget. Everyone seemed to have something to do to occupy their time, leaving Lirael at loose ends. Rather than check her bells and sword again, she walked across the clearing to Sam and the fire. Sam looked up as she sat down and smiled, quickly and anxiously, before returning his gaze back down to his fingers. In the fading light she could see the faint glow of Charter Marks as he spelled what he held in his hands.

“I’m glad you’re here,” confessed Sam quietly when the glow died away. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” said Lirael. “A Pzich can be challenging to deal with. How are you going?”

Sam opened his hand to expose two soft objects about the length of one of Lirael’s finger joints and about as wide as a finger. He tilted his head in thought, before nodding. “I’m done, I think,” he said. “Do you want to have a look at it?”

“Sure,” said Lirael, and accepted the small squishy plugs that Sam handed up to her. Charter Marks swam across their surfaces as she studied them carefully, many that she didn’t recognise. “Do you think it’ll work for Nick?”

“Yes,” said Sam. “Mogget told me that Charter Magic acts strange around him, but this will work.”

“All right,” said Lirael. “Do you have yours?”

Sam patted his backpack. “Right here. I’ll put them on later.” He blinked and looked around. “Where’s Nick?”

“I’m right here,” said Nick from the edge of the forest. He made his way over to the fire with the filled water skins, Mogget ambling underfoot with a fish in his mouth, and placed them down beside Lirael’s leg as he sat down next to her on the ground. Mogget took a space near the fire to deposit his fish, next to Sam’s feet. “What do we need to do now?”

“You need to wear these,” said Lirael, handing over the earplugs. Nick took them and looked at them in interest. “Sam, you’ll cast the diamond of protection.”

“Got it,” said Sam and stood up. He took three paces away from the fire and drew his sword to draw the first cardinal mark. “Large enough for us to sleep? I can’t imagine anyone flying a Paperwing after dark.”

“That’s right,” said Lirael. She glanced alongside to Nick, who was testing his wrists thoughtfully before putting one earplug in, and nodded to Sam. Sam frowned, then nodded in understanding. “It’s also been a long day.”

“Oh, yes, it has been,” said Sam. “Wasn’t thinking.”

“And we’ll need some way to lure it here,” said Lirael.

“Freshly spilled blood would do it,” said Mogget, who was now under Sam’s feet again. Lirael couldn’t say when he had moved. Quick as lightning, he pounced on Sam’s leg, burying sharp claws into Sam’s trouser leg above his leather boot. Lirael winced in sympathy.

“Ow!” protested Sam. “What was that for?”

Mogget landed back down on the dirt on all fours. “If you don’t hurry and cast the diamond of protection, then I won’t get my fishing hut.”

“It’s _my_ fishing hut, you’re just borrowing it,” muttered Sam, testing where Mogget’s claws had dug into his flesh. In the fading light Lirael could see that there was a dark stain blossoming on his trouser leg, staining his fingers with a wet darkness that she knew had to be blood. He cast the first point of protection for the diamond.

Lirael stepped away from the fire to the edges of the diamond as Sam rounded the four points, drawing Kibeth and Dyrim. She kept their clappers still, and took a breath against a thrill of nerves. She heard Sam sheathe his sword as he finished the diamond, and felt the ward come into existence. “Keep an eye on Nick,” she said not looking back to him.

“I will,” said Sam seriously. “I won’t hear anything in a moment.”

Lirael nodded, her attention focused on the sounds of night settling in around them. She could hear the calling of small nocturnal mammals, the creak of insects. Underneath that, she thought she could hear the peculiarly wet silence of a Pzich’s movements, and she stepped into Death.

The river of the First Gate was terribly cold, an awful shock from the fire-licked warmth of before. Lirael stepped carefully through the deceptively gentle currents, listening for a Pzich. Or something worse. For a moment, she missed the Disreputable Dog desperately. She had gone into Death with Sabriel after defeating Orannis, but this was the first time that she had gone into Death alone. It was terribly lonely, and frightening.

“I have to keep going,” said Lirael to herself, to steel her nerve. “Nick and Sam need me.”

She could hear the waterfall that separated the First and Second Gates, a great terrific roar of sound that masked anything else. There was a pause in the sound, as if there was a large body moving through the water, and Lirael flipped both bells and rang them in a figure of eight pattern. As she rang them, she forced her will down on the Pzich making its way through to Life. It stopped, caught on the pin of her will, and struggled. Lirael forced its tongue to stillness, trapping its song into a strangled choke. It fought against her, even as she forced it to walk through the waterfall between the First and Second Gate and beyond. She kept her will on it until it was so deep into Death that it would not be able to resist the current. She returned her bells to the bandoleer, and returned to Life.

There, she blinked in surprise. The Pzich, an eerily thin creature that looked like a woman with hair obscuring her face and limbs with too many joints lay on the ground outside the diamond of protection like a discarded rag doll. That was expected. She did not expect to see Nick on the ground, with Sam pinning him in place, both of them breathing heavily. Mogget looked on from his place by the fire.

“What happened?” she said.

“It started singing,” said Nick breathlessly. “And I couldn’t _hear_ it but I wanted to fight it.”

“He did more than that,” said Sam. There was a bruise forming on the side of his face along his cheekbone. “I couldn’t reason with him at all! The earplugs should have worked!”

“If he had been truly affected, you would know it,” said Mogget disdainfully. “He was only a little influenced, that’s all.”

“Do you feel all right now?” asked Lirael.

“Yes,” said Nick. “You can let me up now, Sam.”

Lirael let them to it. She turned her attention back to the Pzich, drawing the Charter Marks in the air to burn its body. It burned bright and hot, like a star, and with its cremation the sharp metallic tang of Free Magic left her mouth. She exhaled, tension draining from her as she did so. She was still so very new to being the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, that every time she tried something new her heart caught in her throat and her stomach clenched, despite knowing that what she was doing was less difficult than what she had already done. One day she would be settled in her role, confident. A true Abhorsen, like Sabriel was.

“Will I encounter a lot of those?” she heard Nick ask Sam. She turned around and went back to the fire.

“Not in Belisaere,” said Sam as she did so.

“There’s more to the north,” said Lirael as she sat down near them and the fire. “Sabriel said that I’ll see them more the further I travel.”

“I suppose I’ll have to learn to stop doing that,” said Nick thoughtfully, looking at her.

“What?” said Lirael, confused and more than a little apprehensive about what he meant by that. She saw Sam look at the two of them and shake his head.

“You two are idiots,” he said in amusement. “Though, Nick, you’ll have to learn to use a sword first if you want to protect my aunt.”

“I think I can do that,” said Nick.


End file.
